Disney president and chief creative officer Dana Walden said she's actively working through the future of Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show on ABC, acknowledging the business challenges facing the format even as Kimmel's ratings rise.
Speaking Thursday morning at Bloomberg's Screentime, Walden called late-night "a very challenging daypart." She said, "That's not to say that Jimmy is not doing a phenomenal job, and his ratings are up, but they're up relative to a smaller audience that's watching late night on broadcast television." She noted that while millions of viewers watch portions of the show on YouTube, that viewership "is not a lucrative opportunity for a very premium talk show." Walden added, "We're trying to make sense of the business while also honoring a deep partnership. I love Jimmy. We have a great friendship. He's close to a number of the people at Disney, and again, we're trying to work through it and make sense of both. What does Jimmy want? What's the right thing to do, and what's the right thing for our business?"
The comments follow a September Page Six report claiming Kimmel would step back from late-night once his contract expires in May 2027, after 24 years on the air. ABC denied the report at the time, telling multiple outlets that any claims about the show's future were "inaccurate" and "purely speculative."
Kimmel and "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" have been at the center of tension with the Trump administration over the past year. ABC pulled the show off the air "indefinitely" about a year ago after Nexstar Media, one of the country's largest TV station owners, said it would pre-empt the program over Kimmel's on-air jokes about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Around that time, FCC chair Brendan Carr warned of possible action against ABC, saying on Benny Johnson's podcast, "These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel or there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead."
In April, the FCC ordered ABC to submit its license renewal applications early, shortly after President Donald Trump called for Kimmel to be fired over a joke about First Lady Melania Trump. In early September, Kimmel said during a monologue that an interview with Texas state Rep. James Talarico would move to YouTube out of concern over possible retaliation from Carr's FCC.
Moana's Box Office Shortfall
Walden also addressed the disappointing theatrical run of the live-action "Moana," which opened in July. She attributed its underperformance to its closeness to the animated "Moana 2," which arrived in November 2024. "It's so competitive right now that you have to have … the right film at the right time, with audiences feeling a certain degree of demand," Walden said. "I would say our live-action 'Moana,' which is excellent, I think it was hurt by the proximity to our second animated version of 'Moana,' which came together under unusual circumstances, but premiered about 18 months before this one. So perhaps there was not enough time to create a lot of pent-up demand for another film."
The original 2016 "Moana" earned $643 million worldwide, while "Moana 2" — assembled from material originally developed for a scrapped TV series — surpassed $1 billion by the end of its run. The live-action remake brought in just $323 million worldwide against a production budget of $250 million. Walden said Disney's broader IP strategy extends beyond ticket sales: "Our job is to deliver the highest quality. Try to create content which endures and is going to be of value years and years and years from now. That is what has built this unmatched canon of IP. So there will be an event. There will be something."
Recent Layoffs
Walden also discussed Disney's recent layoffs, which affected several hundred employees across multiple departments and marked the third such round this year under newly appointed CEO Josh D'Amaro. "I think, like all of our similarly situated competitors, and certainly all of our competitors in the tech industry, there is a need to constantly evaluate how you're structured. You know what? How big is the organization?" Walden said. She added that the most recent round was a "voluntary retirement program, which was extremely generous and gave a number of our long-tenured executives agency and the opportunity to make their own decisions around whether the timing was right to leave or to stay, knowing that this evolution will never stop, technology set their sights on our business, and we must survive and thrive and grow, and that's what we're going to do."
Photo: LucaFazPhoto, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
